THURSDAY, APRIL 26 | SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 | © 2018 STUDENT MEDIA
DRAFT DAY DREAMS Christian Kirk, Armani Watts among Aggies hoping to hear their names called By Angel Franco @angelmadison_ According to NFL Draft prospect and former Texas A&M wide receiver Christian Kirk, Draft Day is a day most football players hope to get to. “That’s every kid’s dream. to be able to go to college and have a great and successful career and be a first round draft pick and walk across that stage,” Kirk said. However, as the hours get closer to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell officially announcing the Cleveland Browns are on the clock, A&M’s streak of having a player drafted in the first round every year since Von Miller in 2011 is in jeopardy. While Kirk said he would be honored to continue the streak, he isn’t worrying about where in the draft where he will be picked. He just considers himself lucky to be in the position he is in. “I’d be wrong if I said it didn’t mean anything, it definitely means a lot being able to carry on that tradition,” Kirk said. “It’s definitely a goal of mine, but wherever I get picked up, I’ll be blessed and once I get to the next level that’s a new chapter and I’m going to have to go out there and do my thing.” Kirk, who declared for the draft after his junior season, is the only Aggie who is projected to potentially come off the board in the first round this year. Most mock drafts have him as an early to mid-second round pick. Out of six analysts on cbssports.com, only one has Kirk going in the first round, at No. 29 overall to Jacksonville. Thirty days before the draft, Kirk, along with teammates Armani Watts, Damion Ratley, Shane Tripucka, Priest Willis, Keith Ford and Qualen Cunningham, showcased their talents in front of representatives from
Wide reciever Christian Kirk could be drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft, carrying on the streak of first round picks from Texas A&M started in 2011 with Von Miller.
DRAFT ON PG. 4
Cassie Stricker — THE BATTALION
A political commentary on Comey Former FBI Director tells sensitive information By Kenya Robinson @_KenyaJ
Creative Commons
Former FBI Driector James Comey’s new book talks about his former job and sensitive data.
From abruptly being fired as FBI Director to sharing sensitive files with a former colleague, James Comey’s transparency with the media about allegedly sensitive information continues to raise eyebrows. Comey is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice about whether or not the memos he
leaked contained classified information to the press, as reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday. Comey, who took detailed notes of his conversations with President Donald Trump while serving as Director of the FBI, passed a set of memos to Daniel Richman, former federal prosecutor, who then leaked Comey’s memos to the press. The Associated Press published 15 copies of Comey’s memos last week, which are currently under review by the DOJ. Comey’s decision to publish the memos after being fired raises questions on whether or not he illegally released information to the
public, an issue he discussed with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last week in an interview. “I’m a private citizen and I have, in my safe downstairs, an unclassified memo about that conversation,” Comey said when discussing his conversations with President Trump. “And I’m a private citizen, I can tell people about conversations with the president that are unclassified. And so I’m going to do it.” Since 1940, the president has been responsible for setting forth the system of classifying information that COMMENTARY ON PG. 2
Alex Sein — THE BATTALION
Facebook was aware of the mistreatment of data two years prior to the banning of Cambridge Analytica, according to The Guardian.
Jesse Everett — THE BATTALION
Sueli Rocha-Rojas’s Spanish 301 class was challenged to express culture in their photographs used for the exhibit.
The data scandal explained Showcasing heritage through art A look at the information security issues plaguing Facebook By Henry Mureithi @SOCOMBlack On March 17, the New York Times and The Observer reported on Cambridge Analytica’s use of personal information data harvested by a Cambridge researcher, purportedly for academic purposes, without the consent of the relevant users. As a result, Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, from advertising on its website. The Guardian also reported Facebook had been aware of this issue for two years, but did nothing to inform or protect the affected users. The Guardian later reported Joseph Chancellor, co-director of Global Science Research, the company that acquired and sold the data from tens of millions of Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica, has
been working for Facebook as a corporate quantitative social psychologist since around November 2015. On April 4, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters the personal information of up to 87 million people, most of whom are Americans, was improperly shared by Facebook with Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Consequently, Facebook announced sweeping changes to many of its Application Programming Interfaces (API) — the software tools that allow third parties, such as advertisers, to collect and use data directly from Facebook. Dwayne Whitten, information systems clinical associate professor, said Facebook users should be more cautious about their personal data, even at maximum privacy settings. “Users should never expect that their data won’t be shared or accessed by others,” Whitten said. “It’s been shown repeatedly that data has been sold, shared or accessed ANALYSIS ON PG. 2
Spanish 301 class uses photography to highlight different cultures By Jane Turchi @JaneTurchi
Students in Sueli Rocha-Rojas’ Oral Expression class are taking their studies out of the classroom and into the community. After presenting their artwork on campus, these Aggies aim to share their work with the surrounding area. Students in Rocha-Rojas’ Spanish 301 class presented 24 photographs, which demonstrate different cultures around the world and at A&M. Located on the second floor of the Academic Building, the exhibit featured works created by students in Rocha-Rojas’ class. To explain their meaning, each piece of art has a QR code that audiences are able to scan with their phone to watch students present and explain their piece in both Spanish and English. According to Rocha-Rojas, the Oral Expression class has expectations to share the art
with different communities throughout College Station and showcase the different cultures the works represent. The show will travel to local high schools and junior high schools within the College Station area when classes resume in the fall of 2018. “First, we would watch Spanish speaking films over other identities and then we had to relate those with our own identity and then they had to find within our own community,” Rocha-Rojas said. “They were learning Spanish and another language, the language of photography.” Rocha-Rojas said she came up with the idea for the project from her own photography studies, which she used to cross over into the Spanish language class. According to Rocha-Rojas, this is the first time she has taught the class at A&M and the projects represent the multiplicity of the Spanish identities. “My goal for the class was that they would learn Spanish and through Spanish they would develop a product, they would develop something that is going to go [as] an open ART EXHIBIT ON PG. 3